Wedding Photography: 202

More images from our recent wedding ...

During my previous post I mentioned some things to hope for if you plan on shooting weddings. WDL, beautiful surroundings, beautiful , fun and loose bridal party, etc. Today, I'll share some of the things I've read and learned about Wedding Photography, specifically from this shoot!

Bring extra batteries! I had definitely planned for this one, with spares for each camera, as well as, 2 sets of rechargeables and chargers for our flash guns. We both completely exhausted 1 camera battery each, and would have been dead in the water without a spare! I also exhausted the batteries in my flash, and would have been hosed and forced to shoot the reception at very high ISOs, without precharged AA's. I cannot emphasize enough for anyone who wants to shoot Weddings, to be prepared for simple things like batteries!

Plan for your gear to 'mysteriously disappear' just when you want it most! We were shooting some formals in the hotel, when I wanted to shoot the bride next to a window flooded with light. Of course, the main light caused some harsh shadows on the opposite side of the face. Although this is a popular portrait technique, I wanted to pop some extra light on the opposite side of the face from the window using my reflectors to give it a soft, natual appearance. My reflectors, camera bags, tripods, etc had all 'disappeared'! I think I did okay making do with what I had, but was a touch concerned there for a while that my gear was gone! (we did finally find it in a staging area.)

Plan ahead! I cannot emphasize enough how difficult it might be to get the shots you want and particualarly the Bride wants, without proper planning and due diligence.

Bring more memory than you think you could possibly need! Assuming most of us are now shooting digital, it affords us a great deal of flexibility. Memory is cheap! I had 10GB worth of memory cards with me and only had a couple GB to spare. Heidi used nearly 5GB of data. If you can't afford more memory, at least take something with you to backup your memory cards onto after each fills up.

Pain Relievers are your friends! Although we took them with us, we made a HUGE mistake by not actually "taking" them. Duh! From my experience as a flyfisher, this is an absolute must. 12+ hours shooting throughout the day, even the lightest camera can feel like a 50lb brick after shooting all day long. Don't kill yourself take precautionary measures before the day starts!

Mat